sschaff@SLAC.Stanford.EDU wrote:
> Burgy wrote:
>
> > Moorad's POV, with which I concur, is that "evolution-in-the-full-sense",
> > including abiogenesis, is the ONLY option available to the scientist who
> > works (as I do) under the methodological naturalism assumption. No
> > experiment or discovery, not even "kitty cat bones with dino bones," not
> > even a dinosaur skeleton with Ally Oop's skeleton entangled in its teeth,
> > would negate that. [...] It is a necessary consequence of
> > the MN assumption.
>
> This is not strictly true. MN requires one to produce theories about
> how life got here by natural means. "Evolution-in-the-full-sense" is
> (or seems to be) the statement that life developed by natural means
> from non-living matter, and that different living things are related
> by common descent (again by natural means). This is a theory allowed
> by MN, but it is not, at least in principle, the only one. The other
> MN-allowed possibilities would seem to be that life has always existed,
> or that different life forms developed independently of one another.
>
> Steve Schaffner
> sschaff@slac.stanford.edu